All posts by Stephen Michael Brown

I've reviewed films for more than 35 years. Current movie reviews of new theatrical releases and streaming films are added weekly to the Silver Screen Capture movie news site. Many capsule critiques originally appeared in expanded form in my syndicated Lights Camera Reaction column.
2021, Rent It Tonight

Jessica Chastain Gives Gravitas to “Eyes of Tammy Faye” (2021)

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Notorious televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker get a mixed blessing of a big-screen biography treatment in Michael Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye (B-) with Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain in the lead roles. Chastain commands her every sequence and is the central protagonist as the preacher, singer and puppeteer who becomes an empathetic television personality despite her husband’s Faustian bargains leading to their public downfall. Showalter consistently struggles in this piece with tone; it’s never completely clear if this is serious drama, featherweight cautionary tale or historical diversion. Cherry Jones as Tammy Faye’s staunch mom and Vincent D’Onofrio as fellow Christian influencer Jerry Falwell also get some authentic acting moments as foils to the central duo. Chastain is the revelation here.

2021, Rent It Tonight

Kristen Stewart Captures the Soul of Princess Diana in “Spencer”

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Although it joins Eyes Wide Shut and Die Hard in the “I guess it’s a Christmas movie” pantheon, Pablo Larraín’s biographical psychological drama Spencer (A-), about the Yuletide weekend in which Princess Diana chooses to split from the royal family, is a melancholy masterpiece. Kristen Stewart is luminous in the lead role, brilliantly humanizing a public figure we think we all know and plumbing the depths of her spiral into despondency. Larraín’s frenzied fever dream frames its troubled protagonist with such a splendid mise-en-scène of mounting formal and claustrophobic environments, a viewer could well believe it’s a slo-mo horror film as much as a tragedy. The film is often quietly observant, which makes the moments of rage and revelations pulse all the more. For every nightmarish sequence around the corners of her lonely world, there are also tender moments depicting the fun and games Diana furtively plays with her sons. Several supporting performers stand out: Timothy Spall is a hoot as Equerry Major Alistair Gregory, with a constant puss on his face as he tries to reign in our heroine to do her duty, and Sally Hawkins is a delight in a small role as a confidante and royal dresser who whispers into her wanderlust. Deck these halls with Oscars already!

2021, Rent It Tonight

It’s a “Pig” Win for Cage in the Acting Department

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As the fictional John Wick demonstrated across an infamous action trilogy, it’s unwise to meddle with a man’s companion animal! In writer/director Michael Sarnoski’s 2021 cult drama Pig (B), a titular truffle pig is the pet of note and his owner a loner woodsman played by Nicolas Cage. Although its inciting incident indeed involves the kidnapping of the vintage swine, the film centers on the unraveling and reveal of Cage’s withdrawn character through the underbelly of the Portland dining scene, brought into focus by the actor’s singular performance opposite the likes of Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin. Unkept and potentially unhinged, Cage’s character is mesmerizing and buoys this farm to table fable into something quite noteworthy. It’s a return to grizzly form for an actor who has drifted through a rogue’s gallery of unremarkable roles. Sarnoski has undoubtedly tapped into his spirit animal, and his film is absorbing and unexpected.

2021, Rent It Tonight

“Dear Evan Hansen” Becomes Awkward Teen Screen Musical

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Tunefully tackling mental health, cancel culture and the nature of truth in the Internet age – and none of these topics with much dexterity – Stephen Chbosky’s mixed bag musical movie of Dear Evan Hansen (B-) nonetheless provides an absorbing showcase for an ensemble of female actress/singers who wave into a window of emotions more authentic than that of the film’s male lead. Call it Medicated High School Musical, and call it like it is that Ben Platt’s character translates awkwardly from the Great White Way to the silver screen. Platt is mostly crooning to the mezzanine balconies while Chbosky lenses the actor’s histrionics in awkward close-ups which reveal he is powdered in age-reducing prosthetics to reprise the lauded teenage performance he created nearly a decade ago on stage. The cinema canvas also surfaces flaws in the Broadway source material, namely that the audience is meant to sympathize with a character whose mounting lies prove to undermine his perceived good intentions. The characters breaking out into song isn’t really explained or consistent and can be confusing when one of them actually plays guitar as a plot device; and since emotion is already heightened, there’s often not much higher to go in some pedestrian presentational soliloquies. Were the YouTube fans meant to like the speech or the song? One must suspend a good bit of disbelief. However, let’s get to the good stuff, because there are many highlights in this overlong but often moving enterprise. First, the music is flawless, including two solid new songs to add to favorites such as “You Will Be Found.” The film is chock full of stunning female talent: Amandla Stenberg as an activist classmate whose tune “The Anonymous Ones” is a highlight, Amy Adams and Kaitlyn Dever as a mother and daughter recoiling from tragedy in earnest songs such as “Requiem” and “Only Us,” and Julianne Moore whose final reel “So Big/So Small” is a heartbreaker. Platt does indeed shine in many of his scenes of comedy and intense singing, even though the director should have reigned him in and clarified many aspects of the character. And Colton Ryan as a troubled classmate is so captivating in his two major sequences that it’s surprising he didn’t nab the lead role. Still, the parts of this story that work and surprise have the capacity to genuinely touch hearts and minds about the tug of war of man versus his worst instincts in a quest to belong. The film and its protagonist are often a tangled mess, but musical fans will likely grant Chbosky, Platt and company a full pardon for some of their missteps in bringing such an emotional wallop to the screen.

2021, Rent It Tonight

“Malignant” a Horror Surprise

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In theatres and on HBO Max.

This head-scratcher of a horror movie is announcing its intentions as a new realm in terror, but its terrain of dreamscapes and damaged souls feeds on lots of tropes which have already been around for a while. A woman’s premonitions about a deranged killer’s next murders are just the beginning of the story in James Wan’s twisty thriller Malignant (B-), a slow burn of a tale that gets pretty unhinged in its final reel. In the protagonist role, Annabelle Wallis is effective as a troubled woman who may just have a connection to the gilded dagger wielding villain, but amidst many underwritten parts and plot threads, the sometimes hokey film often feels like the work of a first-time filmmaker rather than one who has been making Hollywood horror for some time. The psychobabble that bubbles up fairly far into the movie’s running time is evocative of early Brian de Palma films even though the camerawork and choreography rarely deliver much of a creative spark. It’s all more eerie than scary, and the film often seems enchanted with special effects and stunts that don’t add much to the storyline. Still, it casts a peculiar spell and keeps bringing in ways to keep things exciting, and the promised plot twists do indeed ratchet the proceedings up to a whole new level.

2021, Rent It Tonight

“Titane” Earns its Reputation

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Julia Ducournau’s bleak and difficult French language drama Titane (B+) is a fascinating glimpse at finding love and redemption in an age when it is hard to distinguish human from machine and in which genderfluidity is the engine powering even more creative sparks than ever before. This is tough material, no doubt, but it will reward adventurous filmgoers with an indelible fable of finding shelter and dignity in unexpected ways. Once viewers get past the romantic coupling of a woman and a showroom vehicle resulting in a complicated pregnancy, there are many wonders to behold in France’s controversial entry into Oscar season. Agathe Rousselle gives the mighty performance in the film’s center, a raw and bruised portrayal of a dancer and occasional killer on the run and in absolute turmoil and often in conflict with her own body as she morphs from sexy siren to tight-lipped first responder and back again while the plot machinations mount in blistering bursts. Vincent Lindon is a fantastic foil to her character, portraying a man damaged in his own way seeking someone for whom he can be a caretaker and desperate for ways to showcase his own take on modern masculinity within a twisted and toxic culture. Ducournau blends provocative body horror film and hypnotic domestic family drama in a nightmarish series of surprising episodes, and she never wavers from a singular vision. Her unflinching film displays ethereal energy on the wide canvas of exposition halls and mosh pits and in the intimacy of tight quarters adds to the layers of the story and its original atmosphere. The film’s graphic and nihilistic spirit will be tough for some audiences, but it’s an indelible and engrossing experience built on a complex character.

2021, Industry News

Fall 2021 Movie Preview

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Real-life stories of Hollywood royalty, chronicles of singing poets and lovers, displays of supernatural super heroics and much more will vie for your attention across multiplex and media as the fall film season gets fully underway. Filmmakers continue to showcase the movies they’ve been safely creating during the pandemic, and you’ll get a variety of new fare to enjoy on both big screens and home streaming in the months ahead.

Anticipated sequels and franchises include No Time to Die, the latest Daniel Craig 007 film; Dune, which covers half of the dense sci-fi novel about outer space wars; Halloween Kills with further mayhem between knife-wielding Michael Myers and scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis; and Maverick, Tom Cruise’s long-awaited follow-up to Top Gun.

True-life sagas range from director Ridley Scott’s chronicle of a murderous fashion family with House of Gucci starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver to Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos with Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as television idols Lucy and Desi Arnaz. Two tragic legends also get the big-screen treatment as Kristen Stewart plays Princess Diana in Spencer and Ana de Armas embodies Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. And King Richard stars Will Smith as the father and coach of the Williams tennis sisters.

After the recent successes of Marvel on television, an emboldened box office run should continue with recent Oscar winner Chloé Zhao’s Eternals featuring an ensemble of immortal gods such as Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek plus the third in the latest Spider-Man trilogy, No Way Home, injecting a bit of twisty multiverse time travel into the teen web-slinger’s adventures.

Dear Evan Hansen with Ben Platt as a troubled teenager opposite Amy Adams and Julianne Moore ushers in a season of musicals, followed by Peter Dinklage in an acclaimed crooning performance as Cyrano, Andrew Garfield as an artist on the brink of hitting it big as he faces an early mid-life crisis in Tick Tick Boom, the Colombia-set Disney animated family feature Encanto about a magical family and Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story starring Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler as star-crossed lovers in the gang lands of New York.

Awards season will be in full bloom when Martin Scorsese presents Killers of the Flower Moon starring Leo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro, Jane Campion showcases The Power of the Dog with Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch, and Guillermo del Toro transports us to Nightmare Alley with Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett. The next movie by the droll Wes Anderson, The French Dispatch, features talent such as Timothée Chalamet and Bill Murray.

Some other anticipated autumn fare includes Don’t Look Up, a crashing comet comedy with DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence; Kenneth Branagh’s personal black and white historical drama Belfast with Jamie Dornan and Judi Dench; and the artsy Last Night in Soho with eccentric leading lady Anya Taylor-Joy. Plus there’s some unexpected casting including Denzel Washington as the title character in Tragedy of Macbeth and Brendan Fraser as a 600-pound man in The Whale.

There’s something for everyone, and expect these and many more to receive their bite-sized reviews weekly here at www.SilverScreenCapture.com.

This story is also syndicated throughout American newspapers this month.

2021, Rent It Tonight

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” Mostly Soars

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This movie crouches with creativity until it starts draggin’. For its first two acts, Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (B) grabs the brash brass with a swagger worthy of a first-ever Marvel movie; but by the end of the final reel, the labored adventure limps like the 25th Marvel film installment that it is. The film successfully grounds its characters in intriguing emotional arcs, even if some veteran actors are better suited at the drama than the newcomers. Acclaimed Hong Kong movie star Tony Leung skillfully portrays the patriarch of a dysfunctional family and is the catalyst for a story that transports viewers from San Francisco to Macau in a quest for generational redemption and supernatural accessories. Simu Liu is a stunner of a physical actor in the title role, but his emoting in dramatic sequences is hit or miss, as is that of Meng’er Zhang who plays his stoic sister. Faring much better are Awkwafina in true command of her comic relief love interest sidekick role (leading man Liu is far more natural in moments of levity opposite her) and Michelle Yeoh who ups her “aunty” with dramatic and martial arts choreography skills. The film is an origin story in reverse, and the opening U.S. sequences with casual comedy and an outstanding extended fight aboard a runaway bus eclipse some otherwise deft world building to come in the Asian environment of underground fight clubs, shape-shifting bamboo mazes and enchanted villages with a menagerie of CGI beasts. Other than a glorious battle aboard skyscraper scaffolding, the events abroad do not measure up to the story and tone captured stateside. The film is chock full of interesting ideas but ultimately overstuffed in its endless parade of finales. It’s mostly highly entertaining even if the front is more of a kick than the remaining thrust.

2021

“Annette” a Head-Scratcher

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An undoubtedly frustrating and absolutely beguiling head scratcher of a fever dream musical, Leos Carax’s Annette (C+) is the love child of Sweeney Todd and Chucky from Child’s Play and plays like a dystopian La La Land in its biting take on twisty Hollywood romance. Set to an unusual parade of songs by the band Sparks, it’s more of a film experience to let wash over you rather than ever taking it too literally or seriously. A sensational and physically ominous Adam Driver absolutely sells the central performance of an unhinged comedian who marries an opera singer (a resplendent but underused Marion Cotillard) and starts a family including the marionette child of the film’s title. Carax is known for mixing the natural and artificial, so it’s appropriate he leverages a Brechtian rock opera approach with songs like “We Love Each Other So Much” as a stand-in for an actual courtship and “I’m an Accompanist” to introduce Simon Helberg’s character who is exactly that on the piano. The oddball styling of the songs and sequences, the bonkers shifts in tone and vocal quality and the meandering plot line don’t add up to a cohesive whole, but boy is it an intriguing mixed bag of an experiment. And for fans of Driver, this is probably the most Driver performance you’ve ever seen.

2021, Rent It Tonight

The “Candyman” of 2021 Provides Message in the Mayhem

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Universal Pictures; In theatres.

More of a bonbon for cinephiles than a slasher contraption for the masses, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (B+) builds on producer Jordan Peele’s recent masterworks to expose horrors of the American race and class struggle. Her uncanny Chicago-set narrative about appropriation and gentrification focuses primarily on razor-focused actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen, who plays an artist obsessed with a new subject based on the urban legend of a hook-armed killer bearing sweets who once haunted the city’s projects. The talented Teyonah Parris provides a formidable foil as his partner, an art gallery executive trying to remain above the fray of mysterious mounting events. The ubiquitous Colman Domingo is also effective in a small role. The cinematography, music and menace are straight out of a Hitchcock or Kubrick composition, providing the typical tenets of the horror genre with a considerable upscale upgrade. The labyrinthine honeycomb of this only slightly supernatural take on the Windy City, filled with swirling bees, fun house mirrors, eerie incantations and blood dripping like honey through nooks and hallways, becomes an apt metaphor for twists to come. There are few extended sequences of gore or fan favorite jump scares; instead there is a gradual unveiling of themes and origin stories to stimulate the mind and provide a deeper sense of unsettling. Watch the color palette for clues, and enjoy creative montages including shadow puppets for clever insights into the backstory. DaCosta is all sting as she goes in for both the message and the kill, and if there were one constructive criticism to offer an already pensive film, it would be that it needed even more character development and nuance so that personal transformations could fire with additional intensity. DaCosta’s film is strong and beguiling, and it could become one of those unsuspecting art films to mysteriously rule the box office.

2021, Rent It Tonight

“Free Guy” a Fun Vehicle for Ryan Reynolds

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You might find yourself with resting glitch face after all the stimulation of Shawn Levy’s video game comedy fantasy Free Guy (B), a film that actually gets better and richer as it progresses and reveals superpowers in some of the most supporting players in society. A bit of a riff or revival of The Truman Show set in an open-world video game, this film places Ryan Reynolds at the center as a “non-player character” who learns he can start making his own choices. There’s interplay among the denizens of the game, plus a plot about a diabolical dudebro executive (a hilarious Taika Waititi) trying to manipulate the gameplay to line his pockets and a duo of developers (Jodie Comer and Joe Keery, both earnest) helping steer the situation to a better resolution. The passiveness of the main character is a problem for the first half of the movie, despite Reynolds’ considerable charms and penchant for physical comedy. But the film gains a bit of soulfulness at the half-way point and proceeds to surprise and delight. If you can bear the clang and clamor, you’ll find Levy and company have something to say about community, about taming toxic masculinity and about choosing your own adventure. It’s a bit better than expected, with funny asides, clever effects and a timely lesson about the power of world building.

2021, Rent It Tonight

“CODA” an Absolute Joy

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Available on Apple TV Plus and in limited release in theatres.

This film is speaking my love language. As the teenage daughter of deaf parents with her only sibling deaf as well, Ruby, played with sublime grace by Emilia Jones, seeks to be a standout in the field of choral music, which no one else in her rural New England family can actually hear, in the formulaic but feel-good dramedy of the summer, Sian Heder’s CODA (A-). Heder writes and directs the film with an admirable lack of sentiment and grounds the central family in a highly relatable milieu. The protagonist’s quest to pursue her art while also pulled into the mounting demands of the family fishing business (she’s their sole interpreter) provides ample material for conflict, but most everything comes back to love in an overall work that can best be described as heartwarming. Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur are outstanding as the parents, Daniel Durant charming as the brother and Eugenio Derbez is a delight as the music teacher. Ruby and her family feel real in their every interaction, and even when the story unfolds in pretty much the way a viewer would expect it to, it still does so in surprising ways because of the composition and cunning of this unconventional family. Viewers will be won over by the sweet-natured strengths of the ensemble, the unexpected representation and inclusion of the casting and the writer/director’s skills at quiet observation. Additionally the music sequences are wonderful. Far from a chore or a bore, this film is uplift from beginning to end.